1. Field Of The Invention
This invention pertains to information dissemination systems, and particularly to interactive voice response systems wherein users communicate with a computer over conventional telephone lines.
2. Prior Art
It is the nature of many businesses that they receive many telephone inquiries from customers, potential customers and other businesses. Obviously, if each call is answered by an operator, a sufficient number of operators must be available to answer calls as they are received. The expense of doing this is obvious. Moreover, almost invariably there are peak times when the number of callers exceeds the number of operators. When this happens, many of the calls must be queued. The queue time can often become so long that many callers will hang up in frustration, perhaps never to call again. This results in a significant loss of business and corporate image.
A further problem with operators is that many of today's callers would rather not deal with other people when they have a choice to also use an automated system. As evidenced by the recent popularity of automated teller machines, people often prefer to transact business with a machine at their own pace rather than with a human operator.
Recognizing these problems, others have proposed voice announcement systems wherein a caller accesses a single pre-recorded message. The caller dials a telephone number specific to that service, listens to the message and then hangs up or is disconnected. Examples of these systems include sports information and lottery number pay per call services. Yet others have proposed voice response systems wherein the caller interacts with the system by either pressing the telephone Touch-Tone.RTM. "(a registered trademark of AT&T)" keys or speaking directly into the telephone mouthpiece in response to voice message prompts. Typical examples of these are stock quote systems, transit information systems, call routing systems, local weather and news systems. Certain voice response systems will allow a caller to leave a voice message for a particular party. These are known as voice mail and voice messaging systems.
Known voice response systems all operate by prompting the caller with a voice message prompt spoken by the system instructing the caller to enter either a single touch-tone, multiple touch-tones or to speak a response. Once the voice response system has prompted the caller with a voice message prompt, it then waits a pre-determined amount of time to allow the caller to respond. This is generally on the order of three to five seconds. If the caller responds within the set response time period, the voice response systems application program proceeds to the next level by prompting the caller with the next voice message prompt in the application dialogue. This process is repeated until the caller receives the information he or she wants, hangs up or is disconnected by the voice response system.
If a caller makes an error in response to a voice message prompt or does not enter a response within the set response time, the voice response systems will generally repeat the voice message prompt and ask the caller to try again. If the caller again does not respond within the response time, the voice response system will generally forward the caller to an operator for assistance.
All stored voice messages for known voice response systems are recorded off line either by the voice response systems itself or by another voice response system. This is generally done by recording the human voice as it speaks the content of each voice message to be used in the application. The pace at which each voice message is recorded is generally set to a known comfortable dialogue pace in terms of words per minute spoken. Most importantly, all voice messages on known voice response systems are recorded and played back to the caller at a constant words per minute speaking rate.
As such, known voice response systems prompt tile caller by speaking a voice message prompt at a fixed words per minute rate and waiting a fixed amount of time for a response from the caller. Callers can interrupt the voice response systems voice message before it ends if they know the response before listening to the end of the voice message as is often the case. However this will just bring them to the next level of the voice response systems dialogue where the next voice message will be spoken at the same rate as the previous voice message, indeed at the same rate of all voice messages. This is a fixed rate voice response system where the recorded and playback speed of all voice messages in the system are constant.
While the words per minute speaking rate of these messages is generally set to a level that is understandable by most callers, it does not make any allowances for the individual, natural conversation pace of the varied array of callers a voice response system must deal with. Also, since many callers, having used a particular voice response system application before will be able to proceed through a known dialogue faster, it is desirable not only to have the voice response systems voice messages interruptable by the caller as is possible with existing voice response systems, but it is also a great advantage to allow callers that can hear and understand the instructions embedded within the voice messages at a faster rate to hear those same voice messages at an increasingly faster rate.